AITA For “Skimming Money off the Top” from my Roommates’ Grocery Share?

In this story, a Redditor shares their arrangement with two roommates who pay for groceries while the Redditor does all the cooking and shopping. Any leftover funds were quietly saved in a “rainy-day” fund without the roommates’ knowledge.

When the money was offered to replace a damaged appliance, the roommates accused the Redditor of secretly “skimming” money. Read on to see how things played out and decide if the Redditor’s intentions were fair or if they crossed a line.

‘ AITAFor “Skimming Money off the Top” from my Roommates’ Grocery Share?’

I (24F) share an apartment with my two roommates/close friends – Nikki and Leah, we all make around the same and split rent equally. Nikki and Leah need to go into work everyday and I am mostly WFH, and, I happen to be a pretty good cook.

So we all agreed that instead of eating out or hiring a maid/cook, they would each pay me 5K a month for groceries (so total 10K) and I would not contribute towards the household groceries cost, instead I would cook 2-3 meals daily for all of us, handle the kitchen cleanup, buy groceries etc. This has worked well for us for close to two years at this point.

Now, sometimes in a month, there may be 1K to 3K left over from the 10K they Leah and Nikki have given me, sometimes I get a good deal, sometimes we just eat less. Instead of transferring this money back to them, I have been keeping a “rainy-day” apartment fund, to be used in case of emergencies.

I may have screwed up by not telling them about this fund but that is because Nikki and Leah have a tendency to not save and spend every coin they get, plus it’s not like any of us make a large amount of money anyways (we all make like 35K to 40K a month). If I told them about it, anytime there is a concert or a sale, they would demand it and spend it.

Now over two years, this fund has grown to be about 45K, although it isn’t life changing money, it is more than any of our monthly salaries and as fate would have it, the rainy day arrived yesterday.

I am not very sure what happened but from what I gather, Nikki had been trying her hand at microwave cooking, using recipes from some 5 Min Crafts-esque video and completely sparked/burnt our microwave, which belonged to our landlord.

Now we have to replace the same at out own cost and it is around 12K, and obviously, Nikki will pay for it as it was her fault. Nikki started to panic as she hasn’t gotten her salary yet and she is broke. I told her and Leah that it was fine and I had a fund that was about 45K, Nikki could use her half of it to buy a new microwave.

They went ballistic and accused me of making money off them and skimming money of the top. Neither of them are talking to me, I gave them all of the money. Was I really TA??

Check out how the community responded:

pyrrhaHA −  NTA. You probably should have told them, especially if your intent was that it was a household rainy day fund.
However, I am saying NTA because I think you might be devaluing your labour costs of doing the cooking and cleaning and grocery shopping in this.

They agreed to pay you 5K each every month for cooking. They’re paying you for both the cost of food and for the time you spend cooking and cleaning and shopping.

You should add up how many hours you spend a week cooking (and cleaning), then add up the grocery cost for three people. Consider whether the 1-2K a month plus one third of food costs (since you eat free – it’s a form of payment) is more or less than how much you would pay another external person to do the cooking…

It’s possible you might actually be saving the household money even with the 1-2K left over occasionally, depending on how much wages are where you live.

Haunting-Juice983 −  I’m going to ask the questions no one else seems to have- and that’s fine you guys have a set agreement that did work with each earning 35-40k/month. What currency are we talking? USD? AUD?

Please let me know as someone earning $120k a year, that this can be just my food budget and not my yearly budget?. What am I doing wrong?Thinking I’m doing life wrong with a microwave that isn’t worth $12k to start with/s

CakeEatingRabbit −  ESH. All of you fucked up by not talking about what happens to money that is left at the end of the month.

InappropriateAccess −  NTA. They hired you to do a set of tasks; they don’t get to dictate how you spend the money you earned from doing those tasks.

[Reddit User] −  Wow so much to unpack here.. 1. NTA. 2. YTA if you only fed them Ramen Noodles lol 😂

3. They didn’t pay you only for the groceries, that also entails your services. What was left over should have been yours in my opinion, not even for a rainy day.

4. Value yourself and your services more. Not only did you keep the household managed well for over two years but your intelligence also saved you from potential landlord issues. If I was you, I’d hold on to the rest of the money and only cook for yourself.

Give them some time to do their own cooking or let them hire the maid and cook and etc. They will soon realize how expensive all that is. Also, just because you work from home that does not mean that you work less than them and that your time is less valuable than theirs.

If this was me personally, I would even hold out until they apologize. You let them walk over you right now and you will teach them how to treat you in the future.

starkcattiness4433 −  NTA. You didn’t skim money, as you didn’t take it and spend it on yourself. They should thank you for saving a nice little sum for them! They are being the AHs here.

Lovebug-1055 −  NTA, what about all the labor involved? Cooking 3 meals a day, cleaning up after 3 meals a day, grocery shopping, putting away the groceries, yikes that alone is not worth 45,000.00 for two years worth of work! They can’t possibly be mad especially after you said it you would pay for her mistake out of your income basically.

DFTgamer −  INFO about how much would it cost to hire a cook/maid. Because if it’s anything more than 5K a month then you are the one being taken advantage of.

Frieddiapers −  NTA. I think everyone, especially you, should reframe what it is they are actually paying you for. They are individually paying 5k/month for a live-in maid, you are cooking all of their meals, buying groceries and cleaning for a little less than the cost of a microwave oven.

On top of that, you saved any money left over as a joint fund. I would be so grateful for having a roommate that did this much for me.
Even if you technically were “skimming”, are they not saving more money from this set-up?

Have you all had an agreement on what it is you’re suppose to do if there’s any money left by the end of the month? If not, I think it’s well within your rights to have kept the money for yourself, which you obviously didn’t.

I think it might be good to pause your meal agreement until they start appreciating how much work AND money you are saving them, on top of bailing one of them out when they fucked up. Talk about biting the hand that feeds you…

AndromedaRulerOfMen −  NTA. There’s no way they thought you were spending the *exact* amount they gave you. If they didn’t expect there to be money left, that means they thought YOU were covering the difference and paying more than your share, and they were fine with you being taken advantage of.

Was the Redditor wrong to keep the extra funds for emergencies without informing their roommates, or was their approach reasonable given their concerns? What would you do in this situation? Share your thoughts below!

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